Consumer Webcams With High-Quality Sensors?

xmas2003 writes "Since 2005, I've had a live webcam watching my grass grow — another is currently watching a bird nest on my front door — five babies! While I appreciate the 802.11g wireless and Pan/Tilt/Zoom (10x optical) of the five-year-old D-Link DCS-6620g, it has issues, especially image quality. I've investigated getting a new webcam, but except for high-end/security-related gear from companies such as Axis, there doesn't seem to be much improvement in the consumer space, as most offerings are just cheaper and USB-connected for tethered video conferencing, etc." So where, the reader wants to know, are the high-quality, reasonably affordable webcams? (Read on below.) "I have an 18 Megapixel Canon 7D DSLR that shoots gorgeous 1920x1080x30p hi-def video. While I don't expect that in a consumer webcam, their recently released T2i uses the same chip and sells for $800. And heck, point-n-shoots are a couple of hundred bucks, and now many cell phones have cameras built in, so there're plenty of low-power, speedy CPUs in small packages these days to handle the signal processing. So why hasn't someone taken a sensor with good image quality, downsized to around 1024x768, and put it in a PTZ webcam package with 802.11n wireless for around $500?" Even if it's not that exact combination, what are the best options going these days for high-resolution webcams?

Comments

Great question

[jgreco]

Especially with the advances in storage technology, it would seem like higher resolution for security purposes could sometimes be handy, certainly enough to justify paying at least a modest premium over 10-year-old technology.

Re:Great question

[MoonBuggy]

As with so many things, it's easier and safer for the companies to keep pumping out the same old products. Any innovations that do come about are pushed straight to the uber-niche end of the market where an extra few hundred dollars doesn't matter.

Luckily (and a little unusually), however, there are two pretty simple DIY option in this case. The first is to get a point-and-shoot for $200, load a custom firmware (I know some Canon models are particularly good for this) and write a quick script to take a shot every 'x' seconds, then throw in an Eye-Fi SD card to grab the pictures wirelessly. I haven't used an Eye-Fi card myself, so I don't know what happens when it gets full - maybe add another script in the camera to wipe the card every day or something.

The second is to get a firewire camera. No wireless on this option, but many consumer camcorders support firewire for control, not just for data transfer - I was using these years ago as extra high quality options for video conferencing, but I see no reason that they couldn't be rigged up for stills too.

Re:Great question

[spacey]

From what I remember, the eye-fi doesn't delete content locally, it just uploads. so you'd have to play around with some way of having the modified firmware delete the oldest N photos or something.

Ahh... it seems that the newest cards will auto-delete: http://www.dpreview.com/news/1001/10010501eyefiprox2.asp

-Peter

Re:Great question

[natehoy]

I've researched the Eye-Fi units, and some of the newer ones claim to automatically clear off images once they've verified that the copy is complete.

About the only real issue is power. Most cameras in that class could take maybe a few hundred non-flash images (and the Eye-Fi is probably going to cut into that BIG TIME) and can't take external power supplies easily.

Still, a very interesting thought.

Re:Great question

[MoonBuggy]

Most cameras in that class could take maybe a few hundred non-flash images (and the Eye-Fi is probably going to cut into that BIG TIME) and can't take external power supplies easily.

It might limit your choice of cameras slightly, but there are actually plenty of point-and-shoots that can run from AC adapters. The prefix that Canon uses for the kits is 'ACK'.

Re:Great question

[theheadlessrabbit]

The battery for the Canon SD1100 is pretty good, it can go for about 1200 no-flash shots with the display turned off, (and thats with the cheap dealextreme knock-off batteries) but the highest rate i can get for timelapse is about 1 shot every 4 seconds-and thats without a break to transmit the image to a computer.
The Canon point and shoots I've worked with all have an option for an external power supply, but its a hard to find proprietary adaptor that is way too expensive (can cost about as much as the camera itself)
The cover for the battery compartment should have a tiny hole with a cover (a door-within-a-door) The power adaptor is shaped like a battery which goes into the camera, and the wire goes through that little hole in the battery cover, and into the wall.

That would be a fine solution (about $500 for camera, plug, and wireless SD card) for high quality (well beyond 1080p) stop-motion or timelapse footage, but I don't know if CHDK +Eye-Fi cards would work with continuous streaming video. At the highest quality, your 2 GB card only holds 17 minutes of 640X480 30p video.
You MIGHT be able to write a script to record video in 5 minute chunks, send, erase, record, etc. I'm not sure. I've only worked with BASIC scripts, more might be possible scripting in Lua. that might be better than timelapse, but it would still be intermittent video with long breaks between each scene.

Re:Great question

[michaelhood]

The battery for the Canon SD1100 is pretty good, it can go for about 1200 no-flash shots with the display turned off, (and thats with the cheap dealextreme knock-off batteries) but the highest rate i can get for timelapse is about 1 shot every 4 seconds-and thats without a break to transmit the image to a computer.

That's very slow.. I don't have an 1100 handy, but consider trying a better-rated SD card. That makes an order-of-magnitude difference in the SLRs, in terms of save speed.

Re:Great question

[easyTree]

According to the site:
Features:
  * ....
  * Endless. Get the only card that can free-up space for you after pictures are safely delivered. Never worry about running out of space again.
  * ...

Re:Great question

[newcastlejon]

The cover for the battery compartment should have a tiny hole with a cover (a door-within-a-door) The power adaptor is shaped like a battery which goes into the camera, and the wire goes through that little hole in the battery cover, and into the wall.

Sounds like something one could macguyver with some dowels, gaffer tape and a £5 DC power supply. No problems there.

Re:Great question

[Miamicanes]

Having just had my house broken into ~2 weeks ago and spending most of the past two weeks researching good-but-affordable security cams as a result, here's a bit of what I learned (and bought):

The best-yet-cheap hi-res IP camera I've found is the Compro IP70 (available in the US from Directron, widely available elsewhere in the English-speaking world and a big chunk of Europe).

* The good: 1280x1024 resolution and 1/3" CMOS sensor, awesome low-light performance, onboard microSD card for persistent storage of snapshots triggered by motion or inputs. Dual codecs, so you can have it simultaneously grabbing 1280x1024@15fps for snapshots or web viewing, as well as 320x240 or 640x480 (among others) for viewing on your Android phone/iPhone/other phone. It explicitly supports MJPEG, h.264, and MPEG-4, plus 3GPP (apparently, this means it might work on Java ME MIDP phones and Symbian).

* The bad: mediocre room-light performance with color that's utterly dire if you have the IR activated, and once an event triggers a snapshot (that can be saved to SD, FTP'ed, and/or emailed), it can't take the next pic for ~4 seconds.

* The mitigating: telnet ${ip} to get a real, honest to god root shell complete with busybox. Very little public documentation, but looks almost shockingly straightforward to figure out what's going on, and maybe even replace the onboard apps with my own. According to 'top', the camera has at least 50-100mb free ram running normally, so implementing a burstmode that can grab a bunch of shots to ram once triggered, then upload/save them to persistent storage later shouldn't be too hard. One big tip if you get this cam: "low light" mode != "IR mode" -- low light mode cuts the framerate to interpolate more gray and average out the noise. The problem is, it utterly ruins the camera's ability to take meaningful event-triggered snapshots. So, if I could request just one improvement to it, it would be, "implement a burst mode whereby the camera will (optionally) take 1-4 pics immediately, turn off low-light mode, then take 1-N pics... saving them to a ramdrive, with another daemon pushing them to persistent storage in the background. If nothing else, this camera has serious potential as a fun embedded linux box with onboard USB (the optional wifi is USB), two isolated inputs, and one isolated output, plus 10/100 ethernet. I bought one so far.

* Other details: it's not PTZ, and it's not weatherproof. It's also pretty huge (~5" x 5" viewed head on), so think twice before planning to stick it somewhere aesthetically obvious in your house.

The IP70 has a baby brother with the same resolution, but without the IR called the IP60 for about $40 less (also available at Directron). I haven't used it, I'm just mentioning it to be complete. Officially it has no IR capabilities, but to some extent just about all CMOS cameras seem to be at least slightly IR-sensitive.

For cheap PTZ Linux-based fun, you can't beat the Foscam FI8908W. Their official US distributor is foscam.us, and they're readily available for less than a hundred bucks on eBay (a non-wireless variant exists; it's rare, but about $10 less). Just be careful and make sure the seller LITERALLY specifies "Foscam FI8908W", as opposed to "Foscam-Type" or just shows a pic. There are a LOT of fakes on eBay. I haven't seen them side by side, but from what I understand, the fakes are basically the same camera body and electronics, bought from the same ODM, but have different firmware, and apparently tend to ship with visibly lower-quality lenses. Apparently, some can be reflashed with Foscam firmware, some will get bricked if you do.

Foscam cameras only do 640x480@30fps with MJPEG, but they make up for it by being one of the only cheap IP cameras that doesn't need Internet Explorer to work. They're also very hackable, with several individuals who've made lots of public progress documenting their hardware, bootloaders, and onboard i/o ports (they support 1 in and 1 out, plus JTAG and a few other ports as well. I'm pretty sure I reme

Re:Great question

[Miamicanes]

I forgot to mention -- don't put ANY of these cameras anyplace where you wouldn't mind being viewed by members of the internet-using public unless they're sitting behind a bastion-host firewall/proxy and/or you have a way to physically power them down when you're at home, because their security is largely ceremonial, and trivially easy to bypass if you know what you're doing.

My own setup: my new cameras sit on their own network. The cameras are all powered through X-10 appliance modules, and connect to their own wireless router/access point (itself plugged into an X-10 appliance module). When my security system (Elk M1G) goes into 'away' mode, it cycles through them all twice and sends their 'on' codes once per cycle. When my security system gets disarmed (and hasn't been set off), it sends the 'all off' code to power them down. For now, the second access point is connected via UTP to my main router, with the relevant ports forwarded and double NAT, but at some point over the next few weeks, I'm going to repurpose an old laptop with Debian and use it as both a persistent storage drive and bastion host firewall/proxy (so there will literally be no way to connect directly the cameras from the internet, and so I can use SSL). I'm not thrilled about the wifi security, but it's mitigated by the fact that they're only physically powered up when I'm not at home.

Re:Great question

[Miamicanes]

While I'm at it, I might as well share the rest of my notes from the past few days...

A lot of info about Foscam's cameras in general, by a blogger whose postings about it became quite popular:

http://www.gadgetvictims.com/2009/06/foscam-wireless-pan-tilt-ip-camera.html

http://www.gadgetvictims.com/2009/07/foscam-ip-camera-part-two.html

Info about hacking Foscam cameras. The last time I checked, they'd figured out how the bootloader worked, and were working on getting its Linux distro to run under an emulator to make experimentation easier:

http://www.computersolutions.cn/blog/category/ip-cam

http://irishjesus.wordpress.com/2010/03/30/hacking-the-foscam-fi8908w

http://www.makehackvoid.com/computers/hacking-foscam-fi8903w-linux-based-ip-camera

Foscam's CGI-based web API (for integrating its video into your own app). It's far from perfect, but it's several orders of magnitude better than anything I've seen from companies like D-Link, Linksys, etc. In any case, it beats trying to reverse-engineer what some buggy ActiveX plugin is doing by sniffing the traffic with Wireshark. For comparison, my old PTZ camera is a D-Link DCS5300-W. Its bundled software was quite dire compared to the software that came with my new Compro IP70 and my Foscam FI8988W cameras, and the only thing the D-Link camera has a straightforward means of doing is grabbing a single 320x240 pic (no way to grab 640x480 from it), and I spent HOURS hunting for the elusive URL online.

http://www.drivehq.com/file/df.aspx/publish/bubbah/PublicFolder/IPCAMCGISDKV1.7.pdf

If you have an Android phone, there's one app I know of for viewing many IP cameras: IP Cam Viewer by Robert Chou. Search for it in Android Market (I think it can also be downloaded directly if you're in a country without access to Android Market).

There are also lots of low-cost thirdparty IP camera apps -- viewers, spoolers, etc. Don't be afraid to ditch the app(s) that came with your camera(s), especially if it has a known public API and/or implements known standards.

If you're planning more than a half-dozen cameras (especially if you can easily run new wires for them), you might be better off with a proper security DVR -- you'll be able to use smaller cameras, and pay about half as much for them.

The cheapest web-accessible host I've found is the Aviosys 9100A (roughly 85 bucks online, including from Amazon). It can host 4 cameras and one mic. HOWEVER, I believe it multiplexes them, so you can only watch one at a time. However, I think it can iterate through your cameras, capture a frame from each, and show them all at once in a single grid if you'd like. In any case, if you're looking for a quick & dirty way to get 4 conventional cameras online, this is probably your best bet. If it had an onboard (micro/mini)SD slot, I probably would have bought one of these, too.

Aviosys also has some interesting "Kameras" that do high-res (like the Compro IP60/IP70), but were more expensive and seemed to do a bit less than Compro's. Still, they might be worth investigating, too.

For small, cheap, and cute, the prize goes to the "IP510" camera (sold online under lots of different names and model numbers... IP-510 from buy.com, IP-400 from dealextreme.com). Alex Kuklin has some good info about it on his blog (kuklin.ru), including the

Re:Great question

[tomkost]

Sorry for the top post, but the discussion below seems to be missing some critical information. High resolution webcam is an oxymoron. Yes, your cell phone has 2-10 Mpix sensor, but that is for STILL photography, and even that is not good on a cell phone. At 10 Mpix capture the shutter must remain open a LOOOONG time and the image is usually blurry without a tripod. Now, when you are talking video capture, there is no time to leave the shutter open. Higher Mpix is the enemy of good video, the light available for each pixel will be too low. So, the Logitecs keep making that same VGA camera that works pretty good for video, but not so good for still. This does not even get into what would happen when your high def, high bit rate data stream hits the "internet zone". you will lose packets and the video will crash completely. It's not as simple as it seems.

Re:Great question

[tftp]

Having just had my house broken into ~2 weeks ago and spending most of the past two weeks researching good-but-affordable security cams as a result

Your research is very nice, however you don't mention how those cameras will prevent another break-in. Quality of most cameras is so dismal that all you will see after the burglary is some hooded shadows carrying your stuff away. I have one camera myself, but it is not a major part of the security solution, I mostly use it to see when guests are coming.

If you want to make your house safe then you need to think deeper into what can make it safer. Right now it seems you are focusing only on what you can do due to your background. You need to focus on what needs to be done. Houses in some [bad] locations can't be made safe, short of hiring 24/7 security guards. In other places you may need: a tall fence; a dog; external motion-controlled lights; excellent cameras that take 10 MP photos of everything that happens when the motion sensors activate; other perimeter sensors (beam break type, for example;) door and window sensors; security system that summons police; alarm lights and sirens; battery backup to power all that after the utility power is cut; and other stuff that anyone can easily come up with. You also need to understand what you are going to do if you are so unlucky that the burglars break into the house when you and your family are inside. Many burglars leave no witnesses, and you shouldn't depend on your cameras - at best they will help to catch the killers. If you want an instant (not customized) solution, get a few guard dogs and a gun or two, and stay at home most of the time. 99% of burglars will be deterred by the dogs, and you hopefully will never have to deal with the remaining 1% (but be prepared nevertheless.)

Re:Great question

[Miamicanes]

Actually, I got them mainly so I can reassure myself that my house hasn't been broken into again, and my cats are safe. Ergo, the reason why Android-viewability and MJPEG/RTSP support was so important. The only camera that's really likely to make any difference to identifying a future burglar is the Compro IP70, precisely because it's high-res and non-PTZ. PTZ cameras are great for spying on pets, but aren't great witnesses to burglaries because it's easy to leave them pointing at wherever your pets were last instead of carefully reorienting them into useful burglar-identifying positions after use. Not to mention they're low-res ;-)

Also, I did go a few steps further. I had 15-mil security film installed on my sliding glass doors and windows, and I'll be getting accordion shutters for the downstairs windows as soon as the homeowners' association is satisfied that they're an acceptable shade of dark bronze. I considered impact glass, but decided to go with film+shutters because a single impact-glass sliding door costs about $2,500, and impact glass will keep a determined burglar out about 10-15 seconds longer than fully-adhered window film will. At least with shutters, whomever shows up at the house first can close and lock them right away instead of leaving a huge hole in the wall where the sliding glass door used to be. Plus, impact glass is kind of like painted bumpers -- it provides protection, but can end up being a source of expensive-to-repair damage itself if we get hit by, say, a medium-grade hurricane like Wilma was. One single 4x8 pane of laminated glass costs around $600, and aluminum shutters can take a certain amount of damage before they actually HAVE to be repaired. It would really suck to get hit by a minor category 1 hurricane (the Dade County equivalent of a snow day in upstate New York) and end up with several thousand dollars worth of damage due almost entirely to coconuts from a neighbor's tree...

I'm not losing sleep over danger. Even the police said my house was almost certainly broken into by a high school student... probably from an upper middle-class family living in my own neighborhood. The evidence? He passed up some seriously expensive computer hardware and electronic gear I had lying around, and ran off with a Blu-Ray porn disc & a bucket of quarters I had on the dresser. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that the Pr0n was probably worth more to him than everything else, because it's the one thing a teenager can't openly and legally buy (if he's a teenager, at least). I have no doubt that if I had a 1.75 liter bottle of rum on my dresser, I'd probably still have the bucket of quarters on my dresser.

Re:Great question

[Miamicanes]

^^^ Argh. Memo to self: never use the back-arrow when actively posting to Slashdot. It'll repost the same comment you made earlier under whatever comment you happen to be viewing at the time :(

Re:Great question

[tftp]

It looks like your situation is not that dire. But if you want peace of mind, get a set of switches and install them on all doors and windows. Do not rely upon motion detection in cameras, this is not very reliable. In my case it gets triggered by sudden changes in illumination (such as caused by clouds) and by tree branches moving in the wind. PIR sensors aren't much better, they can react to cold (or hot) air coming in through a window or a vent and mixing with the air within the house. But simple switches will reliably tell you if the door is opened, for example. If your house is not easy to wire this way, get wireless sensors (Z-Wave, for example, or Insteon.) You can connect the whole thing so that you get an SMS when an event occurs, and then you can review the video.

But quite importantly you need to make sure that all this hardware has a deterrent effect. For example, your motion sensors (outdoors) should produce some very obvious effect, like activating floodlights around the house, or beeping something inside the house (loud enough that it is heard outside) and so on. Otherwise you may still be burglarized, even though after the fact there would be plenty of evidence to arrest and convict. I doubt you want to build a honeypot house; you want to make sure burglars don't even try. Of course your shutters help in this department. But they may reduce the resale value of your house (and of those of your neighbors) by pointing out that the whole area is unsafe (whether this is true or not - many buyers are scaredy cats, and no amount of explanations will help if facts speak for themselves.)

And with regard to "teenage bandits" - they are unpredictable and can be more dangerous than old, seasoned burglars.

Re:Great question

[minus9]

I think I'd rather just move house.

Re:Great question

[jgreco]

Regarding the Aviosys 9100A, be advised that alternative firmware is available that might work better for some applications, such as ZoneMinder, see

http://www.zoneminder.com/wiki/index.php/Hardware_Compatibility_List#Network_Digitizers

That looks very promising for integrating normal NTSC into a network. Of course, that's not high quality, but it's interesting regardless.

Re:Great question

[Miamicanes]

I'm a step ahead of you. I already have switches on the doors and windows. They didn't work in this case because the burglar smashed a 4x8 sliding glass door (tempered glass) instead. The sensor on the broken door didn't trigger, because the magnet was glued to the door, and the switch was glued to the frame -- neither of which moved. I have glassbreak, shock, and motion sensors in the room... but all three were disabled because my cats, loud motorcycles, and cars playing loud bass music while driving by kept triggering them (motion detectors are notoriously difficult to use in homes with cats, because "pet-safe" detectors are really "dog-safe" (dogs don't climb and jump the way cats do). Ergo, I reworked a few things. The disabled sensors still don't trigger an alarm, but they DO turn on all the X10-controllable lights in the house and call me on the phone to alert me when they're set off. At that point, I can check the cameras, and manually trigger the alarm from my phone if I want to.

I also bought a few USP 60lb+ pressure mats to put on selected stair treads. I figure that one way or another, a burglar IS going to go upstairs... and to be honest, *I* barely know which steps have sensors, and which don't, so I doubt they'll be able to guess, either. Just to be extra clever, I bought a bunch of 99c floor mats from Ikea, cut them down to be the same size as the pressure mats, and put one or the other under EVERY step, and ran wire from all of them into a thick bundle to the alarm panel (I had plenty of wire), so even if the burglar spots a wire and looks, every step looks like its wired. The fake wires didn't go to waste, either... they're shorted out at the hidden end, and wired in series as a zone in their own right, so if a burglar tries to cut one, it'll set the alarm off, too.

My original intent WAS to use the stair camera to trigger the alarm, but as you noted, cameras are too prone to false-triggering to depend on for alarm purposes.

As far as the outside goes, there's not a whole lot I can do. I already have the whole front and rear yards lit up like stadiums with landscape lights. In fact, the guy broke in in the middle of the afternoon -- when the neighbors and I were all away at work. My long-term plan is to implement a door peephole camera on a digital recorder, because there's no way to approach the house without being in full view of the front door (well, without attracting a LOT more attention by trying to climb over the front fence for no apparent reason, and managing to not scream when he painfully discovers the thin finishing nails I hammered into the tops of the boards so ~1/2" sticks up, cut off the flattened heads, and painted black to camouflage. Officially, there for hanging Christmas lights. At least, that's the story I came up with for the HOA if anyone notices them and asks.

I also want to install a motion detector, and set it up with a circuit to play a faux-windchime rendition of "(I always feel like) Somebody's Watching Me" when triggered. The basic intent is to make it superficially pretty and pleasant... but give an aspiring burglar the creeps as he sees little hints being dropped and have some chills run down his spine when he realizes I'm teasing and taunting him every step of the way, playing with him the way a cat toys with a mouse. If I can find a cheap way to store a few minutes of digital video, turn on the TV, select that player, and start looping it (probably using X10 or Z-Wave), I think it would be hilariously funny to let the aspiring burglar outside see the TV turn on and start looping through a few seconds of 'COPS', proceeding to 'Oz', then the climax of the "Lorena Bobbitt" scene from "I Spit on your Grave". All while the fake windchimes play the themes to the relevant shows on the TV, quietly rising in volume as video progresses.

OK, what I'd really like to do is forget all of that, and just install a set of Secur security blinds from http://www.securityblinds.co.uk/ (they're interior steel bar

Re:Great question

[Miamicanes]

> I think I'd rather just move house.

Well, that's a bit of an over-reaction. Frankly, given the socio-economic status of my neighbors, my biggest threat would be having his lawyer/helicopter-mom sue me for posting the name and pics of her precious spawn breaking into my house on Youtube and potentially hurting his chances of getting into Yale...

Re:Great question

[atamido]

Ideally I'd like a non-PTV camera that isn't wireless, and gets its power using Power over Ethernet. That way I could just run a single Ethernet cable to do everything. Then I'd like to have it detect scene changes for auto-recording, and to be able to upload images/videos via FTP. Any advice?

Re:Great question

[NitroWolf]

Your Foscam example sounds like and/or should be superceded by the Trendnet TV-IP110. It's $50 bucks for the wired version and $70 for the wireless version, I believe it runs linux, you can remove the IR filter from the lens and get wicked awesome low light performance (at the expense of proper color balance), has all the features you mentioned, etc... I looked into getting these cameras in bulk from the Chinese manufacturer, but for anything less than 500 pc, the Microcenter price of $70 for the wireless version is less than the bulk price direct from China. Removing the plastic shell, you can probably shoehorn the board into quite a few discrete places. It's a pretty good camera for $50/$70.

Re:Great question

[asvravi]

Higher resolution != Higher quality. More often than not resolution just trades off with sensitivity and noise, the real quality parameters.

Re:Great question

[Ambient Sheep]

One disappointing detail about every cheap cam I've found: none seem to have any way to turn off the near-infrared LEDs without simultaneously turning off "night mode". I think they must come from the factory with the LEDs hardwired to the camera board and no means of independent control...Pretty much the only way to fix it right now is to tape or paint over the LEDs, or physically unsolder them from the circuit board (so you can have IR sensitivity without the reflection from the onboard LEDs).

Isn't this because otherwise you can see through people's clothes with them? I seem to remember that's why they changed the firmware on the early Sony Handycams that had a "Nightshot" feature: they stopped it from being enabled in daylight as people were using it to take "x-ray" photos of hotties walking down the street. Cue a big rush on the first generation of cameras when they announced that change, no doubt!

Re:Great question

[jgreco]

Yes, but lower resolution != higher quality as well. Since we were already discussing "high-quality sensors" (original topic), my point was simply that higher resolution would also be advantageous. I thought the quality requirement was implied by the discussion. The Axis 200 webcams I picked up many years ago are something like 100Kpixels at normal resolution and are sometimes full of noise when you compare frame-to-frame. At the time of the 200, which I made a crude R/C P/T unit for, an 18GB SCSI drive was "kind of" large, and we were using some custom code on a well-connected UNIX host to provide recording and viewing to a large user population. At 1fps, we were able to store several days per camera.

These days, with many times that amount of space available, I simply think it'd be useful to have cameras that are higher resolution than that, or even NTSC. For security purposes, detail is king. We've all seen crappy surveillance video of a bank or convenience store getting knocked off. They're often blurry and useless, a fabulous tradeoff where cheap gear is used to reduce cost, but also reduces usefulness. It's been over 10 years since the Axis 200. It'd be nice to see a boatload of quality cameras taking high-resolution, high-fps, and yes, high-quality images too.

We're not seeing too much of that. Sigh.

Re:Great question

[Miamicanes]

> Isn't this because otherwise you can see through people's clothes with them?

Not really. The Sony trick worked at the beach because the women were wearing skin-tight swimsuits that freely transmitted body heat (and possibly because the cameras' IR sensitivity extended further into the IR spectrum towards heat). It wouldn't work against normally-clothed individuals who were wearing (among other things) normal cotton underwear in addition to everything else. Absent government mandates or rampant lawsuits, you wouldn't see security camera manufacturers voluntarily compromising their ability to see in the dark just because someone might be able to repurpose them for inappropriate use at the beach.

The only time I ever saw IR "sort of" seeing through clothing was at a nightclub in Miami. They had nightvision cameras pointing at a podium for drunk girls to climb up on and dance, and there was a girl dancing on one with a clingy bra-free top that wasn't particularly opaque to begin with. She was hot, sweaty, and her breasts *were* fully visible, nipples and all. The most amusing part was her reaction when she saw herself dancing with a de-facto sheer top on one of the monitors. She stopped dancing, stared at it while looked confused for a moment... then shrugged and started dancing again. Yet another Miami Moment(tm) to remember forever ;-)

Re:Great question

[LinuxAndLube]

If you want an instant (not customized) solution, get a few guard dogs and a gun or two, and stay at home most of the time.

Are you sure two guns will be enough?

We've all been there...

[Anonymous Coward]

HQ, reasonably priced wireless webcams to be easily stashed wherever I please? I've had that dream as well......

Oh come on now.

[rachit]

Watching grass grow? Watching birds? Tell us *really* what you are going to use the webcam for...

Re:Oh come on now.

[JSBiff]

Hey, every growhouse needs a security/monitoring system. Gotta watch that grass grow and make sure no one steals it.

Re:Oh come on now.

[xmas2003]

Welllll ... the webcam is also used to broadcast Halloween Decorations and Christmas Lights.

Re:Oh come on now.

[TheRealQuestor]

Thank you for showing me just one more place that I swear to god I wish I had never seen. WOW

Re:Oh come on now.

[!eopard]

I was thinking about pointing a webcam at my fishpond, so I could see how my goldfish were doing while I was having fun overseas.
Wish I had acted on this thought at the time, as a mere week later I busted a girl peeing in my fishpond late one night - would've provided some interesting pictures!

Re:Oh come on now.

[Provocateur]

Oh, birds. The kind that go whop-whop-whop and nest at small airports. Think I get it now...

that site

[Anonymous Coward]

can't be from 2005

Re:that site

[treeves]

Site changed, webcam did not?

Re:that site

[Anonymous Coward]

It would seem to me that the webcam hadn't yet been invented when that site was made...

trendnet IP-TV252W and IP-TV512P

[Anonymous Coward]

trendnet IP-TV252W and IP-TV512P are decent POE cameras at relatively cheap prices. one is a pan tilt dome the other is not. interfaces well with linux systems and work really well. not especially high rez but pic quality is decent for $250 or so..

Re:trendnet IP-TV252W and IP-TV512P

[cyprezzz]

Are these cameras stable? My experience is a little out of date, but last I used Trendnet cameras they needed to be rebooted every couple of weeks.

Re:trendnet IP-TV252W and IP-TV512P

[Anonymous Coward]

trendnet also has a megapixel version :
http://www.trendnet.com/products/proddetail.asp?prod=170_TV-IP522P&cat=147
and a night version :
http://www.trendnet.com/products/proddetail.asp?prod=110_TV-IP301&cat=147
252 is only in non megapixel format but has low light capability with delayed shutter :
http://www.trendnet.com/products/proddetail.asp?prod=160_TV-IP252P&cat=148

Re:trendnet IP-TV252W and IP-TV512P

[Eggplant62]

Does it provide video of enough quality that it would stand up in court as reliable evidence of the creeps who might break into my house again this summer? I'm shopping for a reliable camera rig & recorder for just that reason and I can't believe how timely this article is to me.

Re:trendnet IP-TV252W and IP-TV512P

[LurkerXXX]

I've had an IP-TV100 for a few years now. I haven't rebooted it in about a year...

Re:trendnet IP-TV252W and IP-TV512P

[azrider]

Does it provide video of enough quality that it would stand up in court as reliable evidence of the creeps who might break into my house again this summer?

It depends on the jurisdiction. For plain "see judge, this is what I saw" (as a backup to a witness), probably. As standalone evidence, probably not.
The reason for this is that, unlike film cameras, the computer based pictures are discrete pictures that can be edited easily by any of a number of video editors. Commercial grade (Sony, AXIS, Panasonic) IP Video Surveillance products are generally combined with software that includes embedded time stamps and other features that lessen the probability of a faked image.
That said, for home usage such as you suggest, the home variety should do the trick. Of course, you could also plant big signs in your yard that say "Video Surveillance in Progress" and hope they read better than some that I have caught.

Re:trendnet IP-TV252W and IP-TV512P

[Miamicanes]

Make sure you disable the audio. In quite a few jurisdictions (including Florida, and I believe Ohio, Massachusetts, New York, and quite a few others), YOU can conceivably be arrested under old wiretapping laws.

Personally, I'd omit the signs. Why? Information leakage. The burglars will still break in, they'll just be sure they have ski masks or pantyhose over their heads before they're within sight of the cameras. Better to catch 'em off guard. ;-)

Of course, there's my deliciously evil (and unfortunately illegal) fantasy... multiple cameras aimed at the stairway, semi-concealed, with xenon flashes. The burglar steps on the pressure switch under the carpet of tread #5 or #6, sets off the xenon flashes, suddenly sees the cameras next to them, covers his face in panic, blindly runs (or backs) down the steps... and trips over the piano wire attached to two swing arms that normally lies flat against the far end of step #2 or #3, but just rotated 90 degrees up into position and locked when he set off the alarm...

WiFi router with USB + external webcam

[sznupi]

Some routers have external USB ports (typically meant for storage); some of them have the possibility of using quite "normal" Linux, and hence all the drivers it has. So just connect a good quality webcam (note: you might need powered USB hub)

Or even connect Canon digicam with modified firmware and/or use app or script (there are *nix CLI ones) which can control such cheap camera.

(cheap & energy efficient Atom nettop would be fine too, of course...but WiFi routers are somewhat closer to the "independent" webcams you mentioned)

Re:WiFi router with USB + external webcam

[epiphani]

I'm not the submitter, but I also want something like he describes. I happen to live on a road where we get a fairly large number of accidents during the winter - four this past season on my front yard.

I don't want to hack something up personally. I just want a plug-and-play webcam - it should require power only, after I've configured it. I'd put it in my window during storms and that would be it.

While hacking up solutions can be fun, they often don't make for low-profile, portable and ignorable devices.

Re:WiFi router with USB + external webcam

[julesh]

note: you might need powered USB hub

You can get USB cables that have a third connector to supply additional power. Hook one of those up to a power adaptor with a USB output (get 'em on ebay, they're quite cheap these days) and no hub is required.

Re:WiFi router with USB + external webcam

[cayenne8]

I've been looking to set up some sort of ZoneMinder system...and am also looking for some good quality wireless cameras that are compatible with this system.

I need lots of coverage...that isn't really good for wired units (2x story house, front, back, inside...etc). I saw a wiki once from their site, but not the main cameras that seemed to be good quality, are kind of $$.

Re:WiFi router with USB + external webcam

[dissy]

(cheap & energy efficient Atom nettop would be fine too, of course...but WiFi routers are somewhat closer to the "independent" webcams you mentioned)

Not for the mass market or 'end user' at all, but for those interested in the DIY approach:
http://www.plugcomputer.org/

These little things are awesome.
2.5" usb powered external HD + a sheevaplug = teeny fileserver that can tuck away almost anywhere.

This plus two usb cameras could make a great webserver stream of the video.
Just plug it in the wall, give it ethernet or a wifi usb stick, and hang a camera off it.

Protip: In debian (and I assume any debian-like distro) you are just an apt-get install webcam-server away

Re:WiFi router with USB + external webcam

[evanism]

These look absolutely Fantastic !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Re:WiFi router with USB + external webcam

[rapiddescent]

I use Ethernet over Power units for IP cams so I just have to run one cable to each unit in outbuildings etc. EoP also has the side benefit of pissing off radio hams in the locality.

Slashdotting in 3... 2... 1

[Locke2005]

Since you've just posted a link to your site containing large jpegs, I must assume that either you're not paying for bandwidth, or that you're really, really new around here! Or, quite possibly, you are attempting to test the performance of your server under heavy loads.

Re:Slashdotting in 3... 2... 1

[RabbitWho]

On the flipside the little birdies are cute and i enjoyed the buzz light-year doll.

Re:Slashdotting in 3... 2... 1

[Idaho]

Well, the worst that could happen is that visiting the site will feel like watching paint dry.

Tech used by upskirt peeps might be what ya need

[irreverant]

I don't want to be crass, but some of the video technology those guys sometimes girls use are high quality tech.

I think I just found a time machine

[Mabbo]

I think I just found a time machine to 1997.

Re:I think I just found a time machine

[Rockoon]

geocities is back... with a vengeance!

Re:I think I just found a time machine

[FatAlb3rt]

Nah, his scam was a little more recent than that. I knew I remembered that site from somewhere.

Re:I think I just found a time machine

[ElectricTurtle]

Very interesting, and a good catch. Looks like /. is going to feed him some more advertising revenue.

Simple. Don't use a webcam.

[jtownatpunk.net]

I have a 3CCD camcorder with a USB webcam mode. The image is stupid-high quality. Of course, it wasn't cheap and that's not why I bought it but it's a nice added feature. Just about any mini-DV type camcorder will produce a better quality picture than any webcam and many of them are in the $100-200 range. Find one with a webcam mode and you're set.

Your website is so awesome.....

[TheReverandND]

It has crashed my browser (Chrome) 3 times. Congrats.

Re:Your website is so awesome.....

[irreverant]

Chrome?! Now that's funny!!!

Re:Your website is so awesome.....

[MarbleMunkey]

In soviet Russia website slashdots you!

Re:Your website is so awesome.....

[eln]

Ha Ha. Your browser sucks. All it did to me was freeze my browser for 30 seconds while I feverishly pounded on the close tab key. Two seizures and a puddle of vomit later, the window closed and the browser stayed up. Thank you, Firefox!

Re:Your website is so awesome.....

[treeves]

Opera handled it OK. The site even popped up a Javascript window letting me know that it knew I was using Opera.

Re:Your website is so awesome.....

[elewton]

Chromium on Ubuntu handles it all nicely.

Your question is your answer

[Itninja]

I guess the market has not grown because of the tiny percentage of people (not including corporations) using pan/tilt/web-addressable web-cams, most are not really concerned with high-end image quality. They just want to watch birds or use it for home monitoring. A guy in my office has one watching the river behind his house (it floods often). The people who really do want/need the high-end stuff are more than willing to pay big money for it.

Logitech

[JSBiff]

Logitech has some webcams with a pretty decent sensor. Don't remember the model name right off the bat, but you might check out their product line.

Re:Logitech

[drstock]

I second that. Logitech QuickCam Pro 9000 is pretty darn good and reasonably priced.

Re:Logitech

[AHuxley]

Logitech QuickCam Pro has fine print when it comes to HD and frame rate.
Logitech is holding back to sell the next gen.

Re:Wow, bad website design...

[dingen]

Your eyes? What about your ears! MIDI music on a website from 2005, imagine that.

I don't know

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Why "security" cameras(ie. webcam and some sort of TCP/IP speaking computer in the same box, often with goodies like 12/24 volt tolerant GPIO, POE, and weatherproof housings) have largely lagged; but the situation isn't nearly as dire if you are willing to do a touch of DIY.

Between the substantial increase in the number of ~$100 webcams that actually work with UVC drivers and have image quality that doesn't suck, and the availability of highly capable SBCs like the Shivaplug for not much more, you can get an ugly; but surprisingly functional, setup going for ~$300 and a little linux fiddling.

The other option with good price performance punch is taking advantage of all the DV video cameras that are being upgraded by their owners, or have shot tape-transport mechanisms. All but the ghastliest DV cams will outclass virtually all webcams in terms of optics and sensors, and they all connect via firewire in a standard way. A bit bulky; but if you go after stuff being dumped by "HD" enthusiasts, or hardware with broken tape parts, you can get fairly serious image quality for peanuts.

Re:I don't know

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

"Real" security cameras actually vary pretty widely. An unimpressive number of them are of deeply undistinguished quality, pumping NTSC down long and dodgey coax runs, to indifferent capture cards(or old-school tape loop crap). Often weather hardened(which is one of those things that is more annoying than one might expect to DIY); but pretty miserable.

On the other hand, their are undeniably (expensive) offerings that offer contemporary-camcorder-or-better performance with real optics, good sensors, embedded logic that can intelligently prioritize between a lower quality video stream and higher quality stills of interesting or suspicious movements over channels with limited bandwidth. However, these can get really pricey really fast.

For whatever reason, the low end of the market seems to have substantially missed out on the absolutely plummeting costs of adequate sensors, optics, and single-board computers capable of tying them to a network.

Microsoft LifeCam Cinema

[vbraga]

Take a look at Microsoft LifeCam Cinema.

http://www.microsoft.com/hardware/digitalcommunication/productdetails.aspx?pid=008.

Re:Microsoft LifeCam Cinema

[Anonymous Coward]

Personal experience : The equivalent Logitech camera is way way better than the Microsoft one.

Re:Microsoft LifeCam Cinema

[Lester67]

I second this. The Cinema HD is head and shoulders above the old Lifecam's, and better than anything else I've seen on the market (to date). Catch it on sale you'll pay $50. (And it's easily disassembled for hacking/repurposing.)

Re:Microsoft LifeCam Cinema

[Anonymous Coward]

Hope you're consistent and eat no food from Monsanto or Kellogg, or don't drive a car from a big manufacturer and so on.

What's the point?

incorrect terminology

[CityZen]

A "webcam" is typically a USB camera you attach to your PC to do web (video) conferencing.

An "IP cam" is what you're thinking of, which attaches directly to the internet without a separate host.

Now, someone will probably follow up and tell me that "IP cam" is an overloaded term as well.

Re:no market

[blair1q]

Because for $500 I can get all that and a phone with Android OS installed...

Probably a trivial way to access it over the internet, too...

DD-WRT and a higher-resolution USB webcam?

[dgatwood]

For example: http://www.everythingusb.com/microsoft-lifecam-vx-7000-14105.html

Or use a point-and-shoot with a webcam mode.

That said, you'll likely have to massively trade off frame rate for image quality, particularly when you're dealing with an embedded CPU doing the compression.

Roll your own

[rwa2]

I've had some of those expensive Axis/Canon PTZ webcams for work. Pretty sweet what you can zoom into.... we could read license plates off cars in the parking lot outside the office building windows.

I think your best bet would be to attach a $100 USB Logitech Orbit to a $200 nettop, perhaps running off an SD card. There are fairly good Linux drivers (including rudimentary PTZ) and fairly decent optical quality for the Logitech webcams (compared to those D-link webcam things, which I've also learned to loathe). So you could get 1280x960 stills at low frame rates (sounds good for what you're doing) and also 30fps 640x480 video, plus audio. If you stick it on a beefier machine, you could even do mpeg4 encoding and streaming using VLC or something.

Re:Roll your own

[Anonymous Coward]

If you really need the pan/tilt features, an Arduino and a pair of servos could give you those features for under 50 bucks.

USB + disposable laptop?

[cgenman]

Has anyone tried the linksys N?

Other than that, I've attached a QuickCam Pro to a dedicated $50 laptop, and left it running. The whole setup cost about 130, and provided decent low-light performance for the time.

Re:USB + disposable laptop?

[Rockoon]

My experience with the Quickcam line is that the drivers are intrusive.

Say for example you set the exposure settings to look good in your specific lighting conditions (ex: 1/300th of a second) because the automatic correction features are really screwed up for your specific lighting conditions...

..you would expect that the next time a program grabs a snapshot off the camera (or starts recording video), that those exposure settings would have been remembered.. nope .. back to 1/30th of a second.

It proved impossible for me to easily schedule a task to take a picture once per day at 6pm with the QuickCam pointed outside my window, because the automatic exposure setting get the exposer completely wrong (nearly 100% white screen over-saturation), and there is nothing that can easily be done about it because the drivers insist of reverting the exposure setting every single time the camera is opened. Even within GraphEdit, simply stopping and then restarting capture causes the exposure setting to revert.

Re:USB + disposable laptop?

[BLKMGK]

I have not used the N, however I HAVE used the Linksys WVC54GCA Wireless G and found it to be EXCELLENT! the only real issue I had was that it's a bit big if you wish to hide it. Vendors still sell enclosures on eBay for them though so it is possible. I've only ever used this indoors but the video works well and I believe there are some capture packages that can handle it, my friend used Securityspy and it was capable of aggregating multiple cameras and could apparently send video to his iPhone using Cam Viewer for SecuritySpy. Way cool IMO but I never got around to setting this up as some of the software was pay for play and I wasn't that interested. I DID buy the G camera refurbished on eBay and it's quite nice and pretty low powered too, you could likely run it off a LiPo battery pack for awhile. IMO the N camera would work just as well as the G, probably the same hardware except radio. What would be REALLy nice is to hack the firmware for more features :-)

I'd LOVE to get this working with say ZoneMinder and be able to still forward vid to an iPhone though so hopefully others have ideas :-) ZoneMinder sounds awesome but I've just not had the time to set it up and I'm not sure this hardware would work.

Last but not least for a CHEAP USB type setup look at Dorgem for Windows. It will monitor the cam and look for changes in the scene and take pics. I have used this to monitor my home and it works well although shadows and sunlight can screw it up. Free and easy to use with a webcam though. The new Microsoft cams are pretty high def and would work well with this IMO...

Re:USB + disposable laptop?

[Miamicanes]

I have a QuickCam Pro 9000 (the one with autofocus Carl Zeiss glass lens, high-res, etc). It's by far the best webcam I've owned, but you're totally right about their intrusive drivers. They simply refuse to be well-behaving citizens of the windows imaging device universe, politely offering imaging services to your thirdparty apps of choice. No, they want to be the sole object of your affection, and have you reaffirm your commitment to them several times per day.

Last year, I was unable to properly shut down or reboot my computer for ~3 months, because every single time I tried, I'd get a bluescreen warning me that Windows detected a USB hardware error and shut down my computer "to protect it from damage" (er, thanks, Microsoft). It turns out, the stupid QuickCam driver was refusing to release the USB hub (or something to that effect). I discovered that one by accident when I had the camera unplugged for some reason, then shut down the computer as a matter of reflex & was shocked to see it NOT bluescreen. I'm not sure whether I should be more pissed at Logitech for having such a rude driver, or at Microsoft for taking a minor problem and turning it into a major one (really? A malfunctioning USB device is going to cause physical damage to my computer? Fine. SHUT OFF THE DAMN 5.0v POWER TO IT, alert me with a balloon window, then get out of the way and LEAVE ME ALONE. Few things piss me off more than Windows' habit of crashing as a precautionary measure...)

A year earlier, I went through a frustrating week trying to figure out why Thunderbird couldn't update itself (the camera latched onto one of Thunderbird's DLLs, and refused to let go so the file could be deleted).

Last year, I resolved to try and buy only hardware with good Linux support from now on. Why, even though I usually run Windows? For the most part, it seems like hardware that behaves nicely and runs well under Linux tends to be equally well-behaved under Windows. If it has open-source Linux drivers, so much the better... someday, when the hardware mfr. has lost interest in supporting the hardware, someone might be able to use it to make an open-source driver for Windows, too.

To infinity and beyond.

[ardyng]

Ahhhhh! Buzz light year!

Device driver

[physburn]

Watch the device driver support, I port a cheap Net cam, only to find it didn't support Linux or XP 64 which are all I use. The cam was useless to me.

Re:Device driver

[BLKMGK]

XP 64?! Dude, that's a dead end OS that MS has abandoned. Vista or Win7 in 64bit is way better if you have to have 64bit but XP 64 is a PITA for drivers and has been since day one....

Re:Device driver

[theCoder]

What software were you trying to use on Linux? It looks like ZoneMinder supports a number of network cameras, among other ways of connecting a camera to a computer. There are cameras that do stupid things, like require an ActiveX control to get the camera data, that ZM doesn't support, but it looks like most work OK.

I got a D-link DCS-920 recently, and it works fine with ZomeMinder. The biggest problem is that the picture quality is only OK and it doesn't have a very big viewing angle (probably because of the low resolution).

MY EYES!!!!

[schon]

The goggles do nothing!

bad comparison

[Anonymous Coward]

your little page compares a web cam to a DSLR. In other news, a Corvette smoked a Ford Focus on I95N today, film at 11.

astro or machine vision?

[BabaG1]

what about looking into something made for either machine vision or astrophotography? there are some very nice, very simple cameras for those purposes.

Re:astro or machine vision?

[Miamicanes]

For low-end machine vision, there's one obvious product to suggest: CMUcam ( http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~cmucam/ )

Another option that's not quite as widely known, but is slightly different (better in some ways, worse in others, depending on what you're looking for) is the AVRcam ( http://www.jrobot.net/Projects/AVRcam.html ).

Both are basically NTSC/PAL-type monochrome video cameras with a dedicated processor that does things like object-recognition for you and alerts you when it thinks you'll be interested. Neither is likely to be appropriate for astrophotography, but either one will probably do the job nicely if you want to let your robot find a ping pong ball or navigate a maze.

Buzz Lightyear

[weirdcrashingnoises]

I saw that. didn't grab a screenshot in time tho...

i'll be waiting...

Re:Buzz Lightyear

[weirdcrashingnoises]

got this time, in the super high res mode no less...

Buzz Lightyear attacks helpess baby birds. Full Story at 11.

NOT: Logitech QuickCam Pro 9000

[Fuseboy]

I'd love to know also. I bought a Logitech QuickCam Pro 9000 for about $100 to test out for my White Dots (www.whitedots.org) project, but it had very disappointing performance in low light levels (the only ones that matter for me). Distant planes disappeared in a sea of multi-colored noise.

3 steps.

[gurps_npc]

1. Buy a smallish, cheap digital camera that has good resolution and a USB connection. 2. Buy a tripod. 3. Attach camera to tripod, attach camera via USB cord to computer.

100Mbps

[NU11B]

So, if my math is right, you have a 100 Mbps and each image is near 35KBytes. So, with 1k users streaming that puts your total usage at 17.5 MBytes/s, 40 Mbps over your cap... Inc overages!

he wanted a pan-tilt-zoom one

[Chirs]

Apparently you missed the fact that he's looking for one with pan-tilt controls as well as zoom.

Re:he wanted a pan-tilt-zoom one

[sznupi]

He only said he "appreciates" this feature in one webcam he has; but no mention when specifically asking for something better...and is pan-tilt really that usefull for watching grass and birds grow? (zoom can be certainly controlled, too)

Re:he wanted a pan-tilt-zoom one

[drinkypoo]

Sounds like an arduino project. Servos are down to a couple bucks now and you can control up to four of them with one $25 arduino nano.

Canon VB-C60

[bhlowe]

I like the VB-C60 by Canon.. PTZ, 40x zoom, low-light, etc. http://nuspectra.com/

Re:Canon VB-C60

[ekgringo]

Wow, the picture quality and responsiveness looks awesome. Unfortunately it's $1429 or I'd be all over it (even though I'm not currently in the market for one).

Re:Canon VB-C60

[Rashdot]

Hmm, my XP box didn't like that site, first Java crashed, then I got several trojan warnings.

USB limit

[Mooneyj]

Surely there is a limit to what can be sent over usb. Assuming 20fps, 60MBytes/s max (usb 2.0 transfer rate, 480Mb/s), 16bit colour. We have 2bytes per pixel, 3 MByte available per image, so 1.5Mpixel limit to video.

and what do you do for pan-tilt?

[Chirs]

The original poster is looking for a replacement for a camera that has pan/tilt/zoom controls.

Re:and what do you do for pan-tilt?

[jtownatpunk.net]

I'll admit I didn't read the entire summary. Too many of them wordy things. But there are pan/tilt tripod heads. Gotta be some that can be controlled thru the entarwebs. Or MacGuyver a camcorder to the pan/tilt mechanism of his existing camera.

Re:and what do you do for pan-tilt?

[Anonymous Coward]

No problem: attach the 200$ camcorder to an alt-azimuth telescope mount. for $195, a serial to USB adapter for $10 and a Wireless router or storage box that runs linux for $50-$100, and you've just fulfilled all the wishes of the op with some room left in the budget. To control the Pan and Tilt, you can install INDI server on the linux box or write your own (web?) application that emulates the handbox and move it either interactively at different speeds or move it directly to any horizontal and vertical angle you enter.

Here you go

[Gudeldar]

I think I found what you need.

Step 4 -- the software on the PC

[wonkavader]

Is there some software/standard which gets cameras to snap a picture?

Re:Step 4 -- the software on the PC

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Sometimes.

Some cameras do it, some cameras can be bludgeoned into doing it. Some snicker at the very idea.

It would have been a nice thing to have standardized... About 15 years ago.

Re:Step 4 -- the software on the PC

[pcgc1xn]

gphoto2
Set it up as a cron job.
I have had an old 4Mp nikon taking a photo of our fish tank every 10 minutes for several years now.
Oh, you will need a power adapter for your camera, the batteries don't last that long. Ebay.
like so...
rm fish.jpg
gphoto2 --delete-all-files
gphoto2 --set-config flash=2 #No flash - pisses off the fish.
gphoto2 --capture-image
gphoto2 --get-all-files

mv *.JPG fish.jpg
mogrify -size 800x600 fish.jpg
upload to server.
Not live like a webcam, but depends on your needs.

Ethics HERO three years later

[xmas2003]

Followup three years later from the Ethics Scoreboard

Alek O. Komarnitsky
(December 2007)

This is a first: an Ethics Hero who emerged from the shadow of an Unethical Website designation. Back in 2004, Alek O. Komarnitsky received national attention for a whimsical holiday website that allowed people all over the world to turn his Christmas lights on from their home computers. Everyone had fun, which was clearly Alek's design. Still, when it became known that his site was a hoax and that the lights going on were only an illusion, the Scoreboard weighed in with the opinion that perpetrating such a large-scale deception was wrong, no matter how well-intentioned. Alek objected, and has maintained a spirited defense of his stunt in e-mail exchanges with the Scoreboard. But you can't keep a Christmas spirit down. At a significant cost in time and money, Alek figured out a way to really let people all over the world turn on his lights, at http://www.komar.org/cgi-bin/christmas_webcam---the very same site that the Scoreboard previously deplored. He has done this for a couple of years now, but has added a new feature in 2007. To quote Jolly Old Alec himself "There are three live webcams and X10 powerline control technology system so web surfers can not only view the action, but also *control* the 17,000 lights. Heck, you can even inflate/deflate the giant Elmo, Frosty, Santa, SpongeBob SquarePants, and Homer SimpsonWhile people around the world (157 countries last year) enjoy seeing the lights ON, environmentalists will be happy to know that they can turn the lights OFF with a click of the mouse. Better yet, this is the 4th year I'm using 100% Wind Energy and even though that is "clean" energy, I even did a Carbon Offset contribution for the 0.61 Tons of CO2 for the ~MegaWatt-Hour of power consumed; that's about the same as one cross-country airline trip. Finally, by providing viewing via webcam, you don't need to burn fossil fuels by driving around to see Christmas lights - Al Gore would be proud! But HEY, the $3/day in electrical costs are well worth the joy it brings to people (especially the kids) when they see the display in person and/or on the web. And new this year is a Hi-Def option, so gather your family around the large screen" The website, Alek reminds us, is free, and also exists to raise awareness of Celiac Disease,which afflicts his two sons as well as many others. He says his lights have raised nearly $20,000 for the cause. I've visited Alek's site, and it is fun, and you can turn the lights on and off, as well as inflate and deflate Homer. You win, Alek! The Scoreboard hereby pardons www.komar.org, and declares you a true Ethics Hero, and a damn persistent one, I must say. Thanks from all us kids, and a very Merry Christmas to you! You've certainly earned it.

How do I turn off your sound? :)

[gknoy]

I realize it's unrelated to your search for a webcam, but ... how do I turn off the sound on your page!?

dslr as web cam

[digibud]

Unless I'm mistaken, Canon dslr's won't allow you to leave them on 24/7 and would not work for a continuous-on camera, which is a typical requirement of a web cam.

Get a generic UVC 2MP webcam and a long USB cord

[kriston]

Not completely appropo, but sometimes you can find what you're looking for by trying out the not-so-obvious solution.

First, go to your local computer store and get a few generic UVC webcams.

While you're there get a few long USB extension cords. You can get an active one that will let you put your camera a few hundred yards away if you like, or a passive one that will get you to thirty or forty feet.

Now go home and plug in all your cameras, one at a time. You can plug in as many as you have USB ports, and, don't worry, no drivers needed.

For Windows, visit this site to download the "MJPEG Surveillance" program: http://www.brooksyounce.com/. Install it and run "MJPEG Recorder," click the right mouse button, and choose "Add New DirectX Camera." This program will let you adjust most of your camera's parameters including frame rate, and even motion detection and how long to record after motion stops. Jack up the resolution to the highest your camera will support since you're not going to want to record full-motion video in a surveillance situation. Be sure to set the JPEG quality to an acceptable level and put a time stamp in the corner, too, that you can read and won't get smudged by the JPEG compression.

A couple of gigabytes of free space is more than enough to record days of 1280x800 at 85% JPEG quality and 1 FPS. Experiment. The motion detection is key.

For example, at my local Micro Center, you can get a typical, generic UVC 1280x800 webcam for $25 or less. Try the WinBook WB-7144 HD Webcam 2-Pack for $40 or $25 for just one camera. In any case you should not pay more than $25 for a UVC webcam. These cheap units do 1280x800 at 30 frames per second and have autofocus, too, which is unbelievable at this price point. For discretion you may wish to disable the LEDs by disassembling the camera (they pop apart after unscrewing the base) and with a needle-nose pliers remove the two LEDs.

The quality is good for daylight, and rather grainy at nighttime. At these prices, experiment and have fun!!

Re:Logitech...NEVER FORGET

[sznupi]

Sure, current Logitech webcams are rather decent (though at most quality levels you can get something cheaper usually (*)); but don't forget that Logitech, being the longtime "leader" of webcams, is almost single-handedly responsible for their stagnation which lasted almost a decade and was interrupted only recently. For almost 10 years they sold to people the same entry level (and most people will of course pick that one) basic design, price and poor quality. Leaving people disgusted with what can be "achieved" by their new webcam...

(*)unless of course you want to use Skype HQ; which is, with willing cooperation of Logitech, restricted to only few webcam of the latter; which only makes things worse in my eyes. Otherwise it's often a safe bet that, say, a Creative webcam will have better quality/price ratio (and understand fully what it means for me to recommend something from Creative - I will never forgive them for Aureal)

Videoconferencing cameras

[loufoque]

There are pretty good HD cameras used in videoconferencing that are affordable.

Try this company

[Neanderthal Ninny]

I have several infrared high resolution closed circuit security cameras at my home from this company which works well for me www.supercirucits.com. They have some high resolution webcameras that you can see if it works for you http://www.supercircuits.com/search?keywords=ip

Re:Try this company

[cayenne8]

"I have several infrared high resolution closed circuit security cameras at my home from this company which works well for me www.supercirucits.com. They have some high resolution webcameras that you can see if it works for you http://www.supercircuits.com/search?keywords=ip "

Do they work with Linux?

Wireless Webcam?

[Gnubman]

My question is well related to the original one posted: I'm currently looking for a way to use a webcam wireless for our conference room. Currently we have are using a Logitech Webcam Pro 9000 with a long extension cable. We video conference with Skype, Adobe Connect, and Microsoft Office Communicator. The USB cable has to go. We tried a wireless USB hub, but it doesn't support webcams. Having a battery powered solution would be great, but if we can get our webcam stream back to the PC wirelessly, our engineering team tells me they can come up with a battery solution. I'm open to just about any solution that will work with the programs above. Keeping this below $500 would be good as well. Thanks!

Switchout the wireless...

[Hylandr]

If you want High quality you're not going to get it with wireless.

Switch to Firewire or traditional capture cards and zoneminder ( www.zoneminder.com ) bluecherry.net sells capture cards that are compatable with zoneminder and the alternatives, and even have their own distribution of Linux for zoneminder.

You will be glad you did, and wonder what you did without for so long.

- Dan.

Re:Switchout the wireless...

[cayenne8]

"If you want High quality you're not going to get it with wireless.

Switch to Firewire or traditional capture cards and zoneminder ( www.zoneminder.com ) bluecherry.net sells capture cards that are compatable with zoneminder and the alternatives, and even have their own distribution of Linux for zoneminder.

You will be glad you did, and wonder what you did without for so long. "

I posted earlier about wanting to do a zoneminder project.

My problem is...running THAT much wire all around a large house/yard to the one server in my office.

I was looking for a wireless solution for that if possible?

What lengths of wire, and how many cameras do you support with your setup?

Just Ordered A LifeCam Cinema

[TheNinjaroach]

After scouring the web for reviews I ordered the Microsoft LifeCam Cinema this morning for $50 from Amazon. It shoots (widescreen) 720p high definition video, is manufactured with all-glass lenses and performs great in low light situations. I was wary of buying a Microsoft product, but the camera is UVC and works out-of-the-box with Linux. Can't wait to get it.

Re:Just Ordered A LifeCam Cinema

[KZigurs]

HW by M$ generally are excellent pieces of kit.
Go figure.

Use a Mini-DV camcorder

[Thurmont]

While using Skype one day I stumbled upon the fact that my nearly 6 year old Panasonic Mini-DV camcorder (PV-GS120) will function as a webcam when it's connected via Firewire. It provides picture quality at or better than an expensive USB webcam, functions well in low light, and has zoom and infrared auto-focus. Turning the built-in LCD around towards the front provides a "view my video" function freeing up my monitor to just display the other party. True, it's not "HD" quality but it serves a new purpose using an outdated camcorder I just had sitting around.

vivotek

[nblender]

Similar to the Axis cameras, I have 2 Vivotek IP7152's streaming video to zoneminder running on an Ubuntu box in my basement... One is across the street in my neighbor's garage window facing my house, and the other in my livingroom window facing my neighbor's house. Across the street I have a Yagi pointing at my house and in my entry way, I have an omnidirectional antenna hooked up to some LMR-400 leading to a DD-WRT access point downstairs. The two cameras talk to that.

Performance is pretty good except at night... I have the cameras set to switch to 'night mode' at night which means B&W and no IR filter... Unfortunately, if someone walks past, across the street from one of the cameras, all I get is a few frames with a blurry person in various stages of walking... Night is when I want clarity... My guess is I need a better lens or at best, more clue.

Re:vivotek

[nmos]

Performance is pretty good except at night... I have the cameras set to switch to 'night mode' at night which means B&W and no IR filter... Unfortunately, if someone walks past, across the street from one of the cameras, all I get is a few frames with a blurry person in various stages of walking... Night is when I want clarity... My guess is I need a better lens or at best, more clue.

Or a light...

Re:vivotek

[Miamicanes]

Is there a "low-light" mode you can turn off that's independent of IR-sensitivity? On my camera, there's a setting with that name that basically works by averaging multiple frames together to increase the grey range and reduce noise. HOWEVER, it renders the camera incapable of taking useful event-triggered snapshots, even in relatively bright room light. I'm pretty sure this is a setting handled by the camera module itself. Try the camera with that "low-light" mode turned off, IR mode turned "on", and the highest framerate your camera supports at the resolution. You might be pleasantly surprised to see it producing decent results in light you previously thought to be impossibly dim.

Try adding halogen illumination to the area. It doesn't even need to be very bright in terms of wattage -- halogen lights radiate almost half their total energy as infrared (CFL and energy-efficient incandescent bulbs emit almost none as infrared), and a few 20-35 watt halogen spotlights can work amazing miracles for your image quality.

If your camera allows you to manually set the exposure and supports bursting on events, try putting a xenon strobe somewhere nearby and triggering it with the camera. 3/4 of the frames will be out of sync with the strobe unless you have some way of properly synchronizing them, but if you can set a strobe period equal to ~1.5-2 times the field rate, you should get at least a few bright frames captured. The strobe doesn't even necessarily have to be white... I have a red strobe from Elk that my Compro IP70 (in IR mode) sees as bright white. In my case this particular experiment didn't yield much, but if you already have the strobe, give it a try some evening.

A SERIOUS SOLUTION

[way2trivial]

but it's 609

http://www.amazon.com/Panasonic-BB-HCM371A-Outdoor-Wireless-Network/dp/B0009PD0ZI/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1273093932&sr=1-1

here is the wired PD device (poe 802.3 powered)
for 665
http://www.amazon.com/Panasonic-BB-HCM735A-Network-splash-resistant-optical/dp/B002PILZV8/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1273093861&sr=8-1

Re:A SERIOUS SOLUTION

[Nalarik]

The BB series are considered Commercial IP Network cameras, but are excellent, used them at a pervious employer.

Would recommend checking out the Residential IP Network Cameras from Panasonic, most of those run around 200$.

Re:A SERIOUS SOLUTION

[Kizeh]

...and according to the specs, they only work on 2.4 GHz and only support WEP. That's right along the lines of what I had found myself, and mirrors the original poster's question on why the offered ip cams have gotten stuck in the technology era of half a decade ago. Also, 640x480 is hardly great.

Horrible website

[Yvan256]

Seriously, what's with that annoying moving lawnmower following my mouse cursor around?

Ahhh watching grass grow

[Eggbloke]

I have spent many an engineering lesson on watching-grass-grow.com. Maybe I need to go outside more?

Re:Simple. Don't use a webcam.

[Mirar]

I checked for that some year ago. None (!) had a webcam mode. Best they could do was to play the DV tape over USB. Maybe the market is different here... :(

ahem...

[damn_registrars]

project

performace

low light levels

Distant planes

Would you mind giving some of your identifying information to that kind gentleman in the suit who is standing over your shoulder?

Correction - you will give your identifying information to that kind gentleman over your shoulder.

Re:ahem...

[Fuseboy]

Yes, that occurred to me too. I just have this feeling that if I ever get this project truly off the ground, somebody's going to use it to spot UAVs in Afghanistan and I'll suddenly be a terrorist.

Stop being obsessed with pan tilt

[Anonymous Coward]

Professionals don't use it nearly as much as they used to these days. They use high resolution and wide angle lenses instead, and do PTZ in software. PTZ was important when your video frame was 480x320 or suchlike. Now you shoot 5 megapixels and pan and zoom digitally.

Watching the grass

[sinistre]

Depends what kind of grass we are talking about doesn't it? What is grass to some are weed to others ;)

640x480 should be good enough for anyone!

[Ransak]

... to paraphrase a certain someone in the IT industry.

In all seriousnessity, check out the Zonet ZVC7630W if 640x480 meets your needs. It runs an embedded Linux kernel with Busybox, supports LAN/WiFi/USB sticks for recording, MJPEG streaming, and has some nifty motion trigger features.

I use a few of these for security cameras and they're pretty easy to weather proof with some caulk and tupperware. My one big complaint however (which might be a showstopper for many on ./) is the built in web features such as 2-way talk require Internet Exploder. It utilizes an ActiveX applet that I haven't been able to get around.

Re:640x480 should be good enough for anyone!

[bigtech]

I have one of these and image quality is terrible. The grass in my lawn comes out pink. In real life it's green.

Re:640x480 should be good enough for anyone!

[Ransak]

Really? Weird. The only one I use that has any color issues is staring through a glass window. What kind of enclosure are you using?

Re:Get a generic UVC 2MP webcam and a long USB cor

[DigiShaman]

Careful! Maximum USB cord length is 5 meters (16ft).

I shrugged that off until I tried connecting a USB printer with cable twice the length. My computer didn't like that. I got messages ranging from unknown device to being able to see, but not print. Only when I connected a shorter cable did everything start to work.

I hear there are cable repeaters, but it will require another AC adapter to be plugged in someplace (powered USB hub might work).

Don't forget the VPN backdoor to CTU

[Zymophideth]

Once you get this running don't forget to get the mandatory VPN tunnel up between you and CTU. You never know when Jack Bauer will need Chole to pull up your video feeds to find terrorists. Heck, if every Mom & Pop gas station can do this it should be a breeze for you.

you won't be disappointed

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only does it work well with Linux, the autofocus function works too! (it's not software-based, it's in the camera, unlike others).

In skype on Linux it is used by default in 320x240 mode though. You can edit the CaptureWidth/CaptureHeight in ~/.Skype/user/config.xml to 640/480 for better quality video. It will not accept 1280x720 which is the native res, nor will it show a wide format image, but all that is a Skype limitation.

Re:you won't be disappointed

[BLKMGK]

Curious - what is the difference between the Lifecam H5D-00001 and the LifeCam H5D-00002? both are listed as Cinema but one of them is being listed as "HD". The other still says it can do 720P though so I'm quite confused and finding no help.

Re:Simple. Don't use a webcam.

[LanMan04]

I have a Sony Handycam that does that (over firewire, anyway), used it in night-vision mode to monitor my back yard).

Sony DCR-TR280

VM95

[IronChef]

Free software can turn some digital cameras into high quality webcams. The list of cameras that VM95 can control is limited, but if you have one or can get one cheap it's a good solution. Of course, you need to have the camera attached to a computer, which may not work for you.

http://www.video-monitoring.com/about_VM95.htm

I used VM95 and an old Kodak digicam from eBay to make a very high quality webcam of an aquarium.

Network cameras (Linux servers!) not webcams

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.networkcamerareviews.com/

has a lot for the new and old guy. And these are not webcams, they are network cameras, or IP cameras. They don't plug into USB but are regular, full-blown servers with a camera attached. And pretty much every single one runs Linux.

Mobotix over Axis

[HycoWhit]

Been playing around with IP cameras for a few years. For the most part I set up camera systems for friends to monitor their vacation homes during the week. Have tried D-Link, Panasonic, Axis, and lately have been using nothing but Mobotix.

Mobotix is by far the most expensive, but Mobotix has been the most reliable for me. Axis was my 2nd favorite, but I have nothing but lockup problems with Axis cameras requiring the cameras be scripted to reboot every 24 hours.

Folks have touched on a few subjects--wireless is convenient, but such a bandwidth hog. Setup a small office with two wireless parking lot cams. The folks in the office used wireless laptops. None of the laptops could get better than 1.5mbps transfers when the wireless cameras were on. Wired the cameras and everyone was happy. The FPS on the cameras improved dramatically and the four or five folks in the office had speedy internet once again.

Another thing folks touched on--picture quality. Look for a camera with a changeable lens. If you want be able to read a license plate or recognize a face at 25' to 50'--you are going to need a nice lens. Even more so if you want to be able to read the license plate on a moving car at night.

Re:no market

[element-o.p.]

Pay a large monthly fee...

At least some of the Android phones do WiFi, so your "large monthly fee" doesn't have to be any larger than what you already pay for Internet (as long as you've got a WiFi router). Furthermore, you can get them on e-bay without a data plan for about half of what GPP claimed, so even the initial outlay isn't that bad (a coworker did that a few days after I bought my Hero).

...to "trivially" access it over the internet.

I saw an app today in the Android Market that would allow your phone to act as a web server. However, I didn't install it, so I don't know what limitations it has. It might be trivial to set up, or it might not.

No, not really. You're going to have a hard time finding the right IP address to connect to.

Two of the first apps I installed on my Hero: ipconfig and NetInfo do that. There were plenty of others. And that's assuming you are too lazy to look in your WiFi router to see what devices are connected. So, no, it's really not that hard.

And you will probably be firewalled out

Because...?

Re:Get a generic UVC 2MP webcam and a long USB cor

[acnicklas]

If you can do VGA over Cat5, surely there's some sort of USB over Cat5 setup? Maximum span of 100m per switch, plus I'd imagine you could rig up something with PoE to avoid having to do a separate AC run.

What do they use for porn?

[AK Marc]

When looking for a nannycam, I wanted something that was wireless with a remote and/or computer controllable for pan and zoom. I was pointed to porn cams, because there are plenty that are used for that where they have remotes and things. I never did find anything, because searching for "cam" and "porn" wouldn't ever get me what I was looking for. Anyone know what a common one is used for that? They shouldn't be too much, and would have some nice features.

It seems the industry has been focused on the cheapest thing that looks good with Skype/MSN/Yahoo type stuff, and very little that's for higher quality or for aiming at anything other than a stationary talking head.

Re:Get a generic UVC 2MP webcam and a long USB cor

[DigiShaman]

Interesting idea. Turns out there are USB extender kits over CAT5.

According to Newegg, the SIIG JU-EX0011-S1 will support USB v1 and 2. However, the data rate gets stepped down to 12Mbit/s. That may or may not be enough bandwidth depending on your device needs.

Re:Logitech...NEVER FORGET

[FooHentai]

Uh, Creative were just as responsible for the stagnation thing. In fact, they've doing it across several different technologies at the same time! Webcams, Audio cards, portable media players. Creative peddle complete shit.

Re:Get a generic UVC 2MP webcam and a long USB cor

[kriston]

We have active USB repeaters. These cameras draw very little power. Some of the power is used to run the repeater.

Here's a list of some cheap ones you can use to 16 more feet: http://www.cyberguys.com/product-search/?keyword=usb+extender&gps=60

And here's your 1000-foot USB extender: http://www.networktechinc.com/extenders-usb.html

Again, my goal is thinking how cheap can we keep it so that if things go horribly wrong we just shrug and try again. I have conventional NTSC Lorex and Q-see systems plus some NTSC camera cards but they're a pain in the neck. If you already know computers the UVC USB webcams give so much more picture resolution for so much less money and annoying CMOS camera headaches.

Also, you can install an infrared spotlight. These cameras will pick that light up in the darkness, too (most any camera will).

Have fun!!

Re:Get a generic UVC 2MP webcam and a long USB cor

[kriston]

Oh, I just noticed the note you folks made about the speed going down. For surveillance purposes, you might be doing one frame per second. That is also how often the motion sensor polls the camera, so you're just taking super-high-resolution snapshots once per second, or whatever you set your frame rate to. My bandwidth math-fu is pretty rusty but once per second should be okay for one 12 megabit USB link.

Re:Get a generic UVC 2MP webcam and a long USB cor

[BLKMGK]

http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.22789

200ft $18 :-)

Re:Simple. Don't use a webcam.

[sonamchauhan]

Curious: what resolution do you get in webcam mode over firewire?

Do you perceive any lag in webcam mode?

1080/30p + HDMI-PCIe card... == Win!

[Anonymous Coward]

Get yourself a 1080/30p camcorder with HDMI out, and
an HDMI -> PCIe card
( MOTU, aka Mark Of The Unicorn
http://www.motu.com/video-products/hd-express-hdmi/ ,
and Black Magic Designs
http://www.blackmagic-design.com/products/intensity/ , and
http://www.blackmagic-design.com/products/intensity/techspecs/ ,
  ( only "shuttle" USB3 version can do 30p! ), both make one
http://www.provideocoalition.com/ for possibly others )

and you'll have ALL the data-storage-problems your heart could possibly desire!

C :

( PS: you may get better quality this-way than from recording in-camera:
some cameras send uncompressed, or unprocessed? video to the HDMI,
so you get better quality data )

Why rated so low?

[BLKMGK]

Nice, no reason this is rated so low! I do notice that there are several LiveCam Cinemas out there - any idea what the differences are? Is it just the market that changes the model number? I see them ending in 0001 and 0002 and 0003 from Dell. Weird! Some are listed as "HD" but all seem to support the same 720P. I've ordered a 0002 model from Amazon which seemed cheapest at $50 shipped...

Resolution != Quality

[Guysmiley777]

The best sensor in the world won't do jack squat for you if you have crap-tastic optics. For pro-am digital photography the lenses are the limiting factor these days, the sensors are more than good enough. And it's not likely you're going to find a webcam with decent glass, sorry. For that form factor (teeny tiny camera) you're not going to get good quality or low light performance.

Try Vivotek who made DLINK cameras

[metalmonkey]

I work with IP security cameras, and in the last year there has been a huge increase in the number of IP cameras, even quite a few now with megapixel images.
Vivotek based in Taiwan is the OEM that made the DLINK cameras and has quite a few cheaper cameras (as well as expensive professional ones). Not sure where they can be obtained retail, I buy wholesale.

Re:Simple. Don't use a webcam.

[LanMan04]

It's 640x480 dv (about 57Mbit/s). Nope, no lag that I'm aware of. Use it for video conferencing on a Mac Mini and it's perfect. Doesn't ever time out in camera mode if it's plugged in to power, which is great.

I bought it off eBay used like 4 years ago though, not sure how prevalent they are now.

Re:Get a generic UVC 2MP webcam and a long USB cor

[metalmonkey]

Make sure that the USB cable extension supports USB2, I know a lot don't.

Re:Get a generic UVC 2MP webcam and a long USB cor

[kriston]

This is awesome!! Thanks for the tips, everyone!!

Fishcam

[montulli]

The original Netscape fishcam http://www.fishcam.com/ has gone through several iterations of cameras. It started on a SGI indy with a camera that came with the computer. It then moved to a portable video camera that was fairly old at the time, but had an analog RCA output and was encoded by the SGI. Now it runs on a Stardot NetCam SC5IR The Startdot camera is an embedded linux computer with a 5 MP video camera and high quality interchangeable lenses. The fact that it is a linux machine means you can do lots of creative things, like run a small web server, FTP, NFS, CIFS, scripts, etc. The most important aspect about a camera in my mind is its reliability. I don't want to reset the thing ever if possible. The Stardot has been running for more than a year uninterrupted. The big problem with Stardot cameras is the price. My SC5IR is over $1000 with all the accessories. A cheaper alternative is to set up a video server and use cheap security cameras with CGA resolution. You can get security cameras for $100 each and a cheap video card for ~$200.

look again

[way2trivial]

the wired one is 1280 X 960

does h.264 video

it's very good

Re:no market

[Miamicanes]

> So why hasn't someone taken a sensor with good image quality, downsized to around 1024x768, and put it in a PTZ webcam package with 802.11n wireless for around $500?

They have. Compro (http://www.comprousa.com/en/product/ip540/ip540.html) makes a few, though they don't appear to have reached the US yet. I saw them for around AU$340 at Directron's Australian site.

However, there's a reason why resolution for IP webcams has been relatively slow to increase: light sensitivity and cost. If you stick with CMOS for cost-savings, as a general rule a 1/4" sensor that does 640x480 will output better-quality video in low light than a 1/4" sensor that's 1280x720/960/1024. Also, as the sensor size shrinks, the impact of lens quality and mechanical build increases. That's why 99% of cheap webcams and ip cameras use 1/4" and 1/3" CMOS. It's a sweet spot that's small enough to keep the chip cost down, but large enough to let them get away with sloppy build quality and less than ideal lens designs.

I own one of Compro's cameras (the IP70). It's nice, and it was dirt cheap all things considered ($120 for 1280x1024 resolution), but its "room light" sensitivity is piss poor unless I fall back on its infrared capabilities (which do nasty things to the colors, but work miracles on its ability to effectively produce video under low-light conditions). There's a good reason why all the low-cost cameras have suddenly discovered nightvision-religion: CMOS sensors are actually better at sensing IR than they are at sensing visible light. In fact, until recently, the biggest problem faced by designers of CMOS cameras was how to effectively block infrared light and keep it away from the sensor. It wasn't until someone, somewhere, got the bright idea of letting some of that IR through, and interpreting it as a luminance channel, in a way that was relatively compatible with color video, that it suddenly became useful.

IMHO, an ideal enhancement to the next generation of CMOS cameras would be the ability to sense visible light and near-IR, but keep the IR channel's data separate in the output file. That way, you could rely on the visible light when possible, but enhance it with data from the infrared channel after the fact when necessary, instead of having to make that decision beforehand and live with its consequences forever.

Actually, that reminds me of something else I learned over the weekend: CMOS cameras *LOVE* halogen lights. I had my stairs lit up like a stadium with compact fluorescent lights, and it barely made a difference to the image quality I got from my camera. Then, I read a suggestion from someone online to try replacing one of the 23-watt CFL bulbs with a 40-watt halogen bulb. Good god, it was literally a night and day difference. Reds are badly desaturated (things that reflect red light also tend to reflect near IR, and halogen bulbs emit half their energy as IR), but the detail is razor-sharp. Basically, halogen bulbs give IR-loving CMOS sensors more of the light they crave. Energy-efficient CFL bulbs emit almost no IR, so they starve its sensors. Even though the 40-watt halogen bulb is only about half as (visibly) bright as the 23-watt CFL, it's pumping out more IR than dozens and dozens of discrete camera-mounted IR LEDs.

Elphel the open camera!

[Wescotte]

http://www3.elphel.com/

Elphel, Inc. was started in 2001 to provide high performance cameras based on free software and hardware designs. Freedom of the users of Elphel products is our top priority - we value and protect it with the GNU General Public License that covers all the Elphel software and hardware designs.

This freedom extends from the convenience of the out-of-the-box usage of the cameras with the intuitive GUI to the possibility to modify any parts of them. It protects user right to create and distribute derivative products based on our designs, products that may be suitable for the applications we had never thought about ourselves.

Vivotek FTW!

[Undernet-hobbit]

http://www.vivotek.com/ I've setup a number of these for customers and it's pretty much Axis at 1/3 the price. Sure the housing might not be the same build quality as Axis but their image quality is top notch (even in very low light situations). for the price, you can't lose.

Only on Slashdot

[Zoxed]

> Since 2005, I've had a live webcam watching my grass grow...

Only on Slashdot is that something to be proud of ;-)

Re:Get a generic UVC 2MP webcam and a long USB cor

[MoreDruid]

hmm about removing those LEDs, is the camera infrared/UV sensitive? you might be able to replace the LED with infrared ones for night vision.

Re:Simple. Don't use a webcam.

[EmagGeek]

Thanks for posting the model number for those who might be interested in knowing.

axis 207mw

[beanfield]

We had some problems with break ins and vandalism in the neighborhood so I got 3 Axis 207MW camera's setup around the house facing out exterior windows. They're a bit pricey at around $350-$400, but they're the only thing I could find at the time in that price range that did 1280x1024 and were wireless. I couldn't easily wire coax or cat5 to two of the cameras because of my house layout (brick) and I didn't want exposed wires inside the house for aesthetics or outside the house where they could get cut. They do a decent job. I wasn't terribly impressed with the built in motion detection and capturing. You can record video or still pics to an ftp site or have pictures emailed to you, but the buffer is so small that you're not going to get any decent frame rates or length of video at any of the higher resolutions. I ultimately just have my desktop capturing their feed live using zoneminder. http://www.zoneminder.com/ I have it setup to record at 4 fps constantly and then if it gets an alarm (senses motion) it captures as fast as it can. That way I can always be sure and review what's happened before and after an event...even if the camera doesn't alert or I want to see something not captured in the "alarm". So far the only thing the cameras have been good for is helping the police prove a drug dealer was lying about getting shot outside my house. That, and it's helpful in the rare occasion the girlfriend accidental sets off the alarm when she gets home for work. I get a text on my cell phone and then can lookup the cameras remotely.

Arecont 10005 - 10 megapixel surveillance camera

[C0L0PH0N]

Our community is replacing its outmoded (640x480) surveillance cameras. Their image is so poor that pointed right at a person, you cannot identify that person, let alone see a license plate number on a car. We are going for the Arecont 10 megapixel camera, which can be had for $765 here, though it will cost us a bit more from our installer. It needs weather protection, and doesn't pan or tilt. But here are the amazing specifications: "Arecont Vision announced the presentation of the first 10-megapixel video surveillance camera that incorporates H.264 compression. The AV10005 is the very first camera that is capable of H.264 at full resolution, offering a 3,648 x 2,752 pixel resolution at up to 5 frames per second and even dual H.264 and MJPEG encoding." I have tested 10 megapixel. Now our surveillance videos will include faces and even license plate numbers. That should be enough for watching the Aphids under the grass grow, and watching the feather follicles on your flock of baby birds.

Re:Get a generic UVC 2MP webcam and a long USB cor

[kriston]

That's a great idea. I was a little concerned about the current draw and the fact that I don't know how to do SMT soldering, but that would be a great enhancement to the setup.

Re:Simple. Don't use a webcam.

[sonamchauhan]

thanks!